Letters From Afar

THIRD Letter

Concerning a Proletarian Militia

Theconclusion I drew yesterday about Chkheidze’s
vacillating tactics has been fully confirmed today, March 10 (23), by two
documents. First—a telegraphic report from Stockholm in theFrankfurter
Zeitung[4]containing excerpts from the manifesto of the Central
Committee of our Party, the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, in
St. Petersburg. In this document there is not a word about either
supporting the Guchkov government or overthrowing it; the workers and
soldiers are called upon to organise around the Soviet of Workers’
Deputies, to elect representatives to it for the fight against tsarism and
for a republic, for an eight-hour day, for the confiscation of the landed
estates and grain stocks, and chiefly, for an end to the predatory
war. Particularly important and particularly urgent in this connection is
our Central Committee’s absolutely correct idea that to obtain peace
relations must be established withthe proletarians of all the
belligerent countries.

Toexpect peace from negotiations and relations between the bourgeois
governments would be self-deception and deception of the people.

Thesecond document is a Stockholm report, also by telegraph, to
another German newspaper (Vossische
Zeitung[5]) about a conference between the Chkheidze group in the
Duma, the workers’ group (? Arbeiterfraction) and representatives of
fifteen workers’ unions on March 2 (15) and a manifesto published next
day. Of the eleven points of this manifesto, the telegram reports only
three; the first, the demand for a republic; the seventh, the demand for
peace andimmediate peace negotiations; and the third, the demand for “adequate
participation in the government of representatives of the Russian working
class”.

Ifthis point is correctly reported, I can understand why the
bourgeoisie is praising Chkheidze. I can understand why the praise of the
English Guchkovites inThe Timeswhich I quoted elsewhere has been
supplemented by the praise of the French Guchkovites inLe Temps. This newspaper of the French millionaires and
imperialists writes on March 22: “The leaders of the workers’ parties,
particularly M. Chkheidze, are exercising all their influence to moderate
the wishes of the working classes.”

Indeed,to demand workers’ “participation” in the Guchkov-Milyukov
government is a theoretical and political absurdity: to participate as a
minority would mean serving as a pawn; to participate on an “equal
footing” is impossible, because the demand to continue the war cannot be
reconciled with the demand to conclude an armistice and start peace
negotiations; to “participate” as a majority requires the strength tooverthrowthe Guchkov-Milyukov government. In practice, the demand
for “participation” is the worst sort of Louis Blanc-ism, i.e., oblivion
to the class struggle and the actual conditions under which it is being
waged, infatuation with a most hollow-sounding phrase, spreading illusions
among the workers, loss, in negotiations with Milyukov or Kerensky, ofprecioustime which must be used to create arealclass
and revolutionary force, a proletarian militia that willenjoy the
confidence of allthe poor strata of the population, and they
constitute the vast majority, and willhelp them to organise, helpthemto fight for bread, peace, freedom.

Thismistake in the manifesto issued by Chkheidze and his group (I am
not speaking of the 0. C., Organising Committeeparty, because in
the sources available to me there is not a word about the 0. C.)—this
mistake is all the more strange considering that at the March 2 (15)
conference, Chkheidze’s closest collaborator, Skobelev, said, according to
the newspapers: “Russia is on the eve of a second, real
[wirklich] revolution.”

Nowthat is the truth, from which Skobelev and Chkheidze have forgotten
to draw the practical conclusions. I cannotjudge from here, from my accursed afar, how near this second revolution
is. Being on the spot, Skobelev can see things better. Therefore, I am not
raising for myself problems, for the solution of which I have not and
cannot have the necessary concrete data. I am merely emphasising the
confirmation by Skobelev, an “outside witness”, i.e., one who does not
belong to our Party, of thefactualconclusion I drew in my first
letter, namely: that the February-March Revolution was merely thefirststage of the revolution. Russia is passing through a
peculiar historical moment oftransitionto the next stage of the
revolution, or, to use Skobelev’s expression, to a “second revolution”.

Ifwe want to be Marxists and learn from the experience of revolution
in the whole world, we must strive to under stand in what, precisely, lies
thepeculiarityof thistransitionalmoment, and what
tactics follow from its objective specific features.

Thepeculiarity of the situation lies in that the Guchkov Milyukov
government gained the first victory with extraordinary ease due to the
following three major circumstances:
(1) assistance from Anglo-French finance capital and its agents;
(2) assistance from part of the top ranks of the army;
(3) the already existing organisation of the entire Russian bourgeoisie in
the shape of the rural and urban local government institutions, the State
Duma, the war industries committees, and so forth.

TheGuchkov government is held in a vise: bound by the interests of
capital, it is compelled to strive to continue the predatory, robber war,
to protect the monstrous profits of capital and the landlords, to restore
the monarchy. Bound by its revolutionary origin and by the need for an
abrupt change from tsarism to democracy, pressed by the bread-hungry and
peace-hungry masses, the government is compelled to lie, to wriggle, to
play for time, to “proclaim” and promise (promises are the only things
that are very cheap even at a time of madly rocketing prices) as much as
possible and do as little as possible, to make concessions with one hand
and to withdraw them with the other.

Undercertain circumstances, the new government can at best postpone
its collapse somewhat by leaning on all the organising ability of the
entire Russian bourgeoisie and bourgeoisintelligentsia. But even in that case it isunableto avoid
collapse, because it isimpossibleto escape from the claws of the
terrible monster of imperialist war and famine nurtured by world capitalism
unless one renounces bourgeois relationships, passes to revolutionary
measures, appeals to the supreme historic heroism of both the Russian and
world proletariat.

Hencethe conclusion: we cannot overthrow the new government at one
stroke, or, if we can (in revolutionary times the limits of what is
possible expand a thousandfold), we will not be able to maintain powerunless we counterthe magnificent organisation of the entire
Russian bourgeoisie and the entire bourgeois intelligentsia with an equally
magnificentorganisation of the proletariat, which must lead the
entire vast mass of urban and rural poor, the semi-proletariat and small
proprietors.

Irrespectiveof whether the “second revolution” has already broken
out in St. Petersburg (I have said that it would be absolutely absurd to
think that it is possible from abroad to assess the actual tempo at which
it is maturing), whether it has been postponed for some time, or whether it
has already begun in individual areas (of which some signs are
evident)—inanycase, the slogan of the moment on the eve of the
new revolution, during it, and on the morrow of it, must beproletarian
organisation.

Comradeworkers! You performed miracles of proletarian heroism
yesterday in overthrowing the tsarist monarchy. In the more or less near
future (perhaps even now, as these lines are being written) you will again
have to perform the same miracles of heroism to overthrow the rule of the
land lords and capitalists, who are waging the imperialist war. You will
not achievedurable victoryin this next “real” revolution if
you do not performmiracles of proletarian organisation!

Organisationis the slogan of the moment. But to confine oneself to
that is to say nothing, for, on the one hand, organisation is always
needed; hence, mere reference to the necessity of “organising the masses”
explains absolutely nothing. On the other hand, he who confines himself
solely to this becomes an abettor of the liberals, for thevery
thingtheliberalswant in order to strengthen their rule isthat the workersshould not go beyond their ordinary“legal”
(from the standpoint of “normal” bourgeois society) organisations, i. e.,
that they shouldonlyjoin their party, their trade union, their
co-operative society, etc., etc.

Guidedby their class instinct, the workers have realised that in
revolutionary times they neednot onlyordinary, but an entirely
different organisation. They have rightly taken the path indicated by the
experience of our 1905 Revolution and of the 1871 Paris Commune; they have
set up aSoviet of Workers’ Deputies; they have begun to develop,
expand and strengthen it by drawing insoldiers’deputies, and,
undoubtedly, deputies from rural wage-workers, and then (in one form or
another) from the entire peasant poor.

Theprime and most important task, and one that brooks no delay, is to
set up organisations of this kind in all parts of Russia without exception,
for all trades and strata of the proletarian and semi-proletarian
population without exception, i. e., for all the working and exploited
people, to use a less economically exact but more popular term. Running
ahead somewhat, I shall mention that for the entire mass of the peasantry
our Party (itsspecialrole in the new type of proletarian
organisations I hope to discuss in one of my next letters) should
especially recommend Soviets of wage-workers and Soviets of small tillers
who do not sell grain, to be formedseparatelyfrom the well-to-do
peasants. Without this, it will be impossible either to conduct a truly
proletarian policy in
			       general,[1]or correctly to approach the extremely important practical question which
is a matter of life and death for millions of people: the proper
distribution ofgrain, increasing its production, etc.

Itmight be asked: What should be the function of the Soviets of
Workers’ Deputies? They “must be regarded as organs of insurrection, of
revolutionary rule”,we wrote in No. 47 of the GenevaSotsial-Demokrat, of
October 13,
			      1915.[2]

Thistheoretical proposition, deduced from the experience of the
Commune of 1871 and of the Russian Revolution of 1905, must be explained
and concretely developed on the basis of the practical experience of
precisely the present stage of the present revolution in Russia.

Weneed revolutionarygovernment, we need (for a certain
transitional period) astate. This is what distinguishes us from
the anarchists. The difference between the revolutionary Marxists and the
anarchists is not only that the former stand for centralised, large-scale
communist production, while the latter stand for disconnected small
production. The difference between us precisely on the question of
government, of the state, is that we arefor, and the anarchistsagainst, utilising revolutionary forms of the state in a
revolutionary way for the struggle for socialism.

Weneed a state. Butnot the kindof state the bourgeoisie has
created everywhere, from constitutional monarchies to the most democratic
republics. And in this we differ from the opportunists and Kautskyites of
the old, and decaying, socialist parties, who have distorted, or have for
gotten, the lessons of the Paris Commune and the analysis of these lessons
made by Marx and
			       Engels.[3]

Weneed a state, hutnotthe kind the bourgeoisie needs, with
organs of government in the shape of a police force, an army and a
bureaucracy (officialdom) separate from and opposed to the people. All
bourgeois revolutions merely perfectedthisstate machine, merely
transferreditfrom the hands of one party to those of another.

Theproletariat, on the other hand, if it wants to uphold the gains of
the present revolution and proceed further, to win peace, bread and
freedom, must “smash”, to use Marx’s expression, this
“ready-made” state machine and substitute a new one for it bymergingthe police force, the army and the bureaucracy withthe entire armed people. Followingthe path indicated by the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871 and the
Russian Revolution of 1905, the proletariat, must organise and armallthe poor, exploited sections of the population in order that
theythemselvesshould take the organs of state power directly
into their own hands, in order thatthey themselves should
constitutethese organs of state power.

Andthe workers of Russia have alreadytakenthis path in the
first stage of the first revolution, in February–March 1917. The whole
task now is clearly to understand what this new path is, to proceed along
it further, boldly, firmly and perseveringly.

TheAnglo-French and Russian capitalists wanted “only” to remove, or
only to “frighten”, Nicholas II and to leave intact the old state
machine, the police force, the army and the bureaucracy.

Theworkers went further and smashed it. And now, not only the
Anglo-French, hut also the German capitalists arehowlingwith
rage and horror as they see, for example, Russian soldiers shooting their
officers, as in the case of Admiral Nepenin, that supporter of Guchkov and
Milyukov.

Isaid that the workers have smashed the old state machine. It will he
more correct to say:have begunto smash it.

Letus take a concrete example.

InSt. Petersburg and in many other places the police force has been
partly wiped out and partly dissolved. The Guchkov-Milyukov governmentcannoteither restore the monarchy or, in general, maintain powerwithout restoringthe police force as a special organisation of
armed men under the command of the bourgeoisie, separate from and opposed
to the people. That is as clear as daylight.

Onthe other hand, the new government must reckon with the
revolutionary people, must feed them with half-concessions and promises,
must play for time. That is why it re sorts to half-measures: it
establishes a “people’s militia” with elected officials (this sounds
awfully respectable, awfully democratic, revolutionary and
beautiful!)—but...but, firstly, it places this
militia under the control of the rural and urban local government bodies,
i.e., under the command of landlords and capitalists who have been electedin conformity with laws passed by Nicholas the Bloody and Stolypin the
Hangman!! Secondly, although calling it a “people’s militia” in order to
throw dust in the eyes of the “people”, it doesnotcall upon
theentirepeople to join this militia,and does not
compelthe employers and capitalists topayworkers and
office employees their ordinary wagesfor the hours and daysthey
spend in thepublic service, i.e., in the militia.

That’stheir trick. That is how the landlord and capitalist government
of the Guchkovs and Milyukovs manages to have a “people’s militia” on
paper, while in reality, it is restoring, gradually and on the quiet, thebourgeois, anti-people’s militia. At first it is to consist of
“eight thousand students and professors” (as foreign newspapers describe
the present St. Petersburg militia)—an obvious plaything!—and will
gradually be built up of the old and newpolice force.

Preventrestoration of the police force! Do not let the local
government bodies slip out of your hands! Set up a militia that will really
embrace the entire people, be really universal, and be led by the
proletariat!—such is the task of the day, such is the slogan of the
moment which equally conforms with the properly understood interests of
furthering the class struggle, furthering the revolutionary movement, and
the democratic instinct of every worker, of every peasant, of every
exploited toiler who cannot help hating the policemen, the rural police
patrols, the village constables, the command of landlords and capitalists
over armed men with power over the people.

Whatkind of police force dotheyneed, the Guchkovs and
Milyukovs, the landlords and capitalists? The same kind as existed under
the tsarist monarchy. After the briefest revolutionary periodsallthe bourgeois and bourgeois-democratic republics in the world set up or
restoredprecisely sucha police force, a special organisation of
armed men subordinate to the bourgeoisie in one way or another, separate
from and opposed to the people.

Whatkind of militia do we need, the proletariat, all the toiling
people? A genuinepeople’smilitia, i.e., one that, first,
consists of theentirepopulation, of all adult citizens ofbothsexes; and, second, one that combines thefunctions of a people’s army with police functions, with the functions of
the chief and fundamental organ of public order and public administration.

Tomake these propositions more comprehensible I will take a purely
schematic example. Needless to say, it would be absurd to think of drawing
up any kind of a “plan” for a proletarian militia: when the workers and
the entire people set about it practically, on a truly mass scale, they
will work it out and organise it a hundred times better than any
theoretician. I am not offering a “plan”, I only want to illustrate my
idea.

St.Petersburghas a population of about two million. Of these, more
than half are between the ages of 15 and 65. Take half—one million. Let
us even subtract an entire fourth as physically unfit, etc., taking no part
in public service at the present moment for justifiable reasons. There
remain 750,000 who, serving in the militia, say one day in fifteen (and
receiving their pay for this time from their employers), would form an army
of 50,000.

That’sthe typeof “state” we need!

That’sthe kind of militia that would be a “people’s militia” in deed
and not only in words.

Thatis how we must proceed in order topreventthe
restoration either of a special police force, or of a special army separate
from the people.

Sucha militia, 95 hundredths of which would consist of workers and
peasants, would express therealmind and will, the strength and
power of the vast majority of the people. Such a militia would really arm,
and provide military training for, the entire people, would be a safeguard,
butnotof the Guchkov or Milyukov type, against all attempts to
restore reaction, against all the designs of tsarist agents. Such a militia
would be the executive organ of the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’
Deputies, it would enjoy theboundlessrespect and confidence of
the people, for it itself would be an organisation of the entire
people. Such a militia would transform democracy from a beautiful
signboard, which covers up the enslavement and torment of the people by the
capitalists, into a means of actuallytraining the massesfor
participation inallaffairs of state. Such a militia would draw
the young people into political life and teachthem not only by words, hut also by action, bywork.  Such a
militia would develop those functions which, speaking in scientific
language, come within the purview of the “welfare police”, sanitary
inspection, and so forth, and would enlist for such work all adult
women. If women are not drawn into public service, into the militia, into
political life, if women are not torn out of their stupefying house and
kitchen environment, it will beimpossibleto guarantee real
freedom, it will beimpossibleto build even democracy let alone
socialism.

Sucha militia would be a proletarian militia, for the industrial and
urban workers would exert a guiding influence on the masses of the poor as
naturally and inevitably as they came to bold the leading place in the
people’s revolutionary struggle both in 1905–07 and in 1917.

Sucha militia would ensure absolute order and devotedly observed
comradely discipline. At the same time, in the severe crisis that all the
belligerent countries are experiencing, it would make it possible to combat
this crisis in a really democratic way, properly arid rapidly to distribute
grain and other supplies, introduce “universal labour service”, which the
French now call “civilian mobilisation” and the Germans “civilian
service” and without whichit is impossible—it has proved
to be impossible—to heal the wounds that have been and are being
inflicted by the predatory and horrible war.

Hasthe proletariat of Russia shed its blood only in order to receive
fine promises of political democratic reforms and nothing wore? Can it be
that it will not demand, and secure, thateverytoiler shouldforthwithsee and feel some improvement in his life?  That every
family should have bread? That every child should have a bottle of good
milk and that not a single adult in a rich family should dare take extra
milk until children are provided for? That the palaces and rich apartments
abandoned by the tsar and the aristocracy should not remain vacant, but
provide shelter for the homeless and the destitute? Who can carry out these
measures except a people’s militia, to which women must be long equally
with men?

Thesemeasures donot yetconstitute socialism. They concern
the distribution of consumption, not the reorganisationof production. They would not yet constitute the “dictatorship of the
proletariat”, only the “revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the
proletariat and the poor peasantry”. It is not a matter of finding a
theoretical classification. We would be committing a great mistake if we
attempted to force the complex, urgent, rapidly developing practical tasks
of the revolution into the Procrustean bed of narrowly conceived “theory”
instead of regarding theory primarily and predominantly as aguide to
action.

Dothe masses of the Russian workers possess sufficient
class-consciousness, fortitude and heroism to perform “miracles of
proletarian organisation” after they have per formed miracles of daring,
initiative and self-sacrifice in the direct revolutionary struggle? That we
do not know, and it would be idle to indulge in guessing, for practicealonefurnishes the answers to such questions.

Whatwe do know definitely, and what we, as a party, must explain to
the masses is, on the one hand, the immense power of the locomotive of
history that is engendering an unprecedented crisis, starvation and
incalculable hardship. That locomotive is the war, waged for predatory aims
by the capitalists ofbothbelligerent camps. This “locomotive”
has brought a number of the richest, freest and most enlightened nations to
the brink of doom. It isforcingthe peoples to strain to the
utmost all their energies, placing them in unbearable conditions, putting
on the order of the day not the application of certain “theories” (an
illusion against which Marx always warned socialists), but implementation
of the most extreme practical measures; forwithoutextreme
measures, death—immediate and certain death from starvation—awaits
millions of people.

Thatthe revolutionary enthusiasm of the advanced class can do agreat dealwhen the objective situationdemandsextreme
measures from the entire people, needs no proof.Thisaspect is
clearly seen andfeltby everybody in Russia.

Itis important to realise that in revolutionary times the objective
situation changes with the same swiftness and abruptness as the current of
life in general. And we mustbe able to adaptour tactics and
immediate tasks to thespecific featuresof every given
situation. Before February1917, the immediate task was to conduct bold revolutionary-internationalist
propaganda, summon the masses to fight, rouse them. The February–March
days required the heroism of devoted struggle to crush the immediate
enemy—tsarism. Now we are intransitionfrom that first stage of
the revolution to the second, from “coming to grips” with tsarism to
“coming to grips” with Guchkov-Milyukov landlord and capitalist
imperialism. The immediate task isorganisation, not only in the
stereotyped sense of working to form stereo typed organisations, but in the
sense of drawing unprecedentedly broad masses of the oppressed classes into
an organisation that would take over the military, political and economic
functions of the state.

Theproletariat has approached, and will approach, this singular task
in different ways. In some parts of Russia the February-March Revolution
puts nearly complete power in its hands. In others the proletariat may,
perhaps, in a “usurpatory” manner, begin to form and develop a
proletarian militia. In still others, it will probably strive for immediate
elections of urban and rural local government bodies on the basis of
universal, etc., suffrage, in order to turn them into revolutionary
centres, etc., until the growth of proletarian organisation, the coming
together of the soldiers with the workers, the movement among the peasantry
and the disillusionment of very many in the war-imperialist government of
Guchkov and Milyukov bring near the hour when this government will be
replaced by the “government” of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies.

Norought we to forget that close to St. Petersburg we have one of the
most advanced, factually republican, countries, namely, Finland, which,
from 1905 to 1917, shielded by the revolutionary battles of Russia, has in
a relatively peaceful way developed democracy and has won themajorityof the people for socialism. The Russian proletariat will
guarantee the Finnish Republic complete freedom, including freedom to
secede (it is doubtful now whether a single Social-Democrat will waver on
this point when the Cadet Rodichev is so meanly haggling in Helsingfors for
bits of privileges for the Great
Russians[6])—and precisely in this way will win thecompleteconfidence and comradely assistance of the Finnish workers for the
all-Russian proletariancause. In a difficult and big undertaking mistakes are inevitable, nor will
we avoid them. The Finnish workers are better organisers, they will help us
in this sphere, they will,in their own way, push forward the
establishment of the socialist republic.

Revolutionaryvictories in Russia proper—peaceful organisational
successes in Finland shielded by these victories—the Russian workers’
transition to revolutionary organisational tasks on a new scale—capture
of power by the proletariat and poorest strata of the
population—encouragement and development of the socialist revolution in
the West—this is the road that will lead us topeaceandsocialism.

Zurich, March 11 (24), 1917

LETTERS FROM AFAR

[1]Inthe rural districts a struggle will now develop for the small and,
partly, middle peasants. The landlords, leaning on the well-to-do peasants,
will try to lead them into subordination to the bourgeoisie. Leaning on the
rural wage-workers and rural poor, we must lead them into the closest
alliance with the urban proletariat.  —Lenin

[2][PLACEHOLDERFOOTNOTE.]  —Lenin

[3]Inone of my next letters, or in a special article, I will deal in detail
with this analysis, given in particular in Marx’sThe Civil War in
France, in Engels’s preface to the third edition of that work, in the
letters: Marx’s of April 12, 1871, and Engels’s of March 18–28, 1875, and
also with the utter distortion of Marxism by Kautsky in his controversy
with Pannekoek in 1912 on the question of the so-called “destruction of
the
state”.[7]—Lenin

[4]FrankfurterZeitung—an influential German capitalist daily
paper, published in Frankfurt-on-Main, from 1856 to 1943. Resumedpublication in 1949 under the nameFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung;
speaks for West German monopoly interests.

[5]VossischeZeitung—a moderate liberal newspaper published in
Berlin from 1704 to 1934.

[7]SeeLenin’sThe State and Revolution(present edition, Vol. 25).

[6]Soonafter its formation, the Provisional Government appointed the
Octobrist M. A. Stakhovich Governor-General of Finland and the Cadet
F. I. Rodichev Minister (or Commissioner) for Finnish Affairs. On March 8
(21), the Provisional Government issued its Manifesto “On Approval and
Enforcement of the Constitution of the Grand Duchy of Finland”. Under this
Finland was allowed autonomy, with the proviso that laws promulgated by the
Finnish Diet would be subject to confirmation by the Russian
Government. Laws that ran counter to Finnish legislation were to remain in
force for the duration of the war.

TheProvisional Government wanted the Finnish Diet to amend the
Constitution to give “Russian citizens equal rights with Finnish citizens
in commerce and industry”, for under the tsarist government such equality
was imposed in defiance of Finnish laws. At the same time, the Provisional
Government refused to discuss self-determination for Finland “pending
convocation of the constituent assembly”. This led to a sharp conflict,
resolved only after the Great October Socialist Revolution when, on
December 18 (31), 1917, the Soviet Government granted Finland full
independence.